Where the Heart Is
by Bonibaru00
Summary: Amy is looking for something, but what she finds is herself. AmyEphram.


Beta-read by the lovely Andariell. Any mistakes contained herein are my problem, not hers. Written for the Everwood Flashfiction Challenge.  
  
Amy had never realized there were so many different kinds of coffee.  
  
She looked furtively around the trendy Manhattan coffee bar, trying not to stare at a lady with really long blue fingernails who was sucking on a red and white striped drink stirrer and complaining loudly into her cell phone about the unjust nature of the city's smoking ban. All of the other men and women sitting around the room seemed so confident, so outgoing. Amy felt small, backwards, and invisible. But then Ephram looked across the table at her, his eyes lighting up when he smiled, and she instantly felt better.  
  
They'd been talking for hours, ever since he'd met her at the airport that afternoon. She had just finished telling Ephram how nervous she was about starting college in Denver in the fall. Amy was already one year behind the rest of her friends. Putting off college in order to stay near Colin had been difficult for her parents to accept at first, but eventually they had relented, understanding that this was something Amy felt she desperately needed to do. She was at his bedside every day, reading to him, hoping against hope for some response behind his vacant eyes. When he had finally died in the spring it had almost been a relief, although when she'd caught herself thinking that the day after the funeral the sudden burst of grief had been so overwhelming that her father had given her a Valium and made her go to bed.  
  
She hadn't gotten up for three days.  
  
She frowned a little at the memory, and Ephram must have thought she was getting tired, because he pushed back his chair with a yawn. "Ready to go?" he asked brightly, flipping through his wallet. "Jetlag's a bitch, I know." She was shocked when she caught a glimpse of the number at the bottom of the check (how much for two coffees and a handful of biscotti?), but Ephram laid down a handful of bills without blinking an eye.  
  
"Don't worry too much about college," she heard Ephram saying. "Your grades are terrific, and you're really smart - you'll pick it all back up in no time." They continued to chat as they walked along through the cool night air. Ephram's apartment was only a few blocks away, and Amy hoped she would have enough time to clear the maudlin thoughts out of her head. She was having a really good time on her first day in New York, and she didn't want to spoil it.  
  
Ephram's invitation to visit had come at just the right time - he was on a break from his music studies for the summer, and her parents were terribly interested in getting her out of Everwood and away from the painful memories there. Her father hadn't even made one wisecrack about the Brown family as he'd kissed her goodbye.  
  
"Purty," said a dark-skinned man in a long green overcoat, sidling toward her as they passed by him on the street. His eyes were red-rimmed and his skin was pallid and greasy. "Purty hair. Goldilocks! I'll buy your hair. Thousan' bucks." The rest of the words trailed off into something unintelligible as he stretched his dirt-encrusted hand toward her head.  
  
She shrank back in surprise, not sure what to say, where to run. She jumped a little when Ephram's warm hand touched the small of her back, pushing her gently to the other side of the walk and putting himself between her and the intrusive stranger. "Not today, buddy." Ephram held out a folded bill in his free hand. "We're keeping the hair." The man quickly plucked the cash out of Ephram's fingers and shuffled off, humming nonsensically to himself. Ephram kept his hand possessively in the hollow of her spine as he steered her away.  
  
It was strange to feel Ephram touching her without any shyness or hesitation. Gone, it seemed, was the awkward boy who had stammered and blushed whenever she was around. This Ephram looked her in the eyes and laughed. This Ephram put his hands on her without a second thought. This Ephram was comfortable with her - and also picked up on her discomfort pretty quickly. "It looks like it might rain, after all," Ephram said casually, raising his hand for a passing taxi. "Let's not walk, OK? I don't really want to get wet." She nodded, wanting to get away from creepy homeless people and off the dark street as fast as she could.  
  
In the cab, Amy tried to keep track of where they were going, the turns they made and the streets they passed, but everything looked the same in the dark and she soon gave up. She was really glad Ephram was with her. Without him, she'd have been lost in no time.  
  
New York was progress, she thought as they drove past brightly-lit shops and busy street corners. This was his city, his world. Amy felt displaced by the push of the crowd around her, distracted by the noise, the smell, crushed to insignificance by the buildings rising to the sky on all sides. Somehow the mountains of Colorado never made her feel so small. She couldn't imagine herself ever living in New York. Just like she couldn't imagine Ephram ever leaving.  
  
A small town like Everwood isn't just a place to live. Amy remembered reading those words aloud from the editorial column of the local newspaper as Colin's eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, his lips dry and cracked around the ventilator tube. It's also a place you carry inside you, that makes you feel safe; not too big to get lost in, but not so small that you can't hide.  
  
New York put her off kilter, even more than she had been before she got on the plane in Denver. While Everwood was endearing, New York was ensnaring.  
  
Back in his apartment, they sat quietly on the living room sofa, watching the rain run down the window panes. Earlier in the day, he had taken her for a walk through Central Park. The trees and the grass had seemed more familiar to Amy than the concrete and the cars. About halfway through the trip, Ephram pointed out a tiny golden flower growing through a crack in the sidewalk.  
  
"That's what's so great about New York," he had told her. "Everyone always looks at the big picture - they see the buildings and the traffic and the crowds, but they hardly ever notice the smaller details. There's a lot of little things about New York that make it special. You just have to know where to look."  
  
She could sense a new, vibrant energy coiled under his skin. He used to get that way when he was playing the piano, she used to love to watch him play because the shy and blushing Ephram from school disappeared and a new Ephram, a confident, sure Ephram took his place on the piano bench. She'd never seen him quite like this before away from the context of his music, though. He was so sure of himself, so - alive. And that's the one thing she'd always known about Ephram: no matter where he might be, he could take care of himself.  
  
Amy was tired of taking care of everyone else.  
  
"I didn't think there could be anything worse than Colin dying, you know?" she said, suddenly. "I always said, when he was in that coma before, that if he would just wake up - I didn't care what he would be like, I would just be glad that he was alive, that he wasn't - wasn't dead. I just wanted him to be there. And then he was there, but he was -" she couldn't say it out loud. He wasn't Colin. Colin never came back. And now he's dead and you're gone and I'm all alone.  
  
Ephram said nothing. She couldn't see his expression; his face was turned away from her and half hidden in shadow. She could smell the rain, heard it dripping into the gutters outside, heard the metallic sounds of the drops clanging off the fire escape.  
  
"It's just - I miss you, Ephram. I miss having you around, I miss talking to you every day, I miss seeing you. It's just not the same without you there. And I wish - I wish you would come back," she said, her voice trailing off into a near whisper, "because without him, and without you, I don't know who I am any more."  
  
She felt a wave of shock ripple through him. He sat frozen for a moment and when he finally spoke she realized he had been holding his breath.  
  
"I don't have that answer for you, Amy," he said. He turned toward her at last and she could see his eyes, pupils wide and dark, irises deepening to a smoky blue. "I can't tell you who you are. You're the only person who can figure that out."  
  
But I don't want to, she thought to herself. It's too hard. Everything is different now and it's just too much. "I - I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come here," she stammered, standing up and groping blindly for her coat, tears stinging her eyes. She jumped, startled as his hands fell gently onto her shoulders and he turned her around to face him.  
  
"Amy," Ephram said softly, and she blinked furiously; the wetness in her eyes made a halo of rainbow colors shimmer around his face. He looked at her intently, leaning forward, forcing her to focus on what he was saying. "I never want you to feel like you can't talk to me, about anything. Even about Colin. I am always here for you, Amy, always - no matter where I am, no matter where you are. No matter who you think you are." His thumb brushed gently against her cheek. "OK?"  
  
She nodded, and moved forward into his encircling arms. Ephram would keep her safe. Ephram would remind her who she was, who she could be.  
  
Ephram felt like home. 


End file.
